


Time Mistress

by MSMagic31



Series: Time Mistress [1]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 11:44:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MSMagic31/pseuds/MSMagic31
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I had never expected to wake up in a world where everyone was different than me. They are so different, that I can't even live their lifestyle. I never age, never waver in emotion as much as the others do. It's when I find out that I'm not human that gears start turning again. Now the search for who I am begins with my only friend, a little girls named Julia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Mistress

Devilfish Lake, MN, USA

January 1937

 Mr. Richmond was a peculiar character that was well ahead of his time. For days he would stay locked away in the depths of his basement, slaving away over his cooky inventions and machines that were more than unfamiliar to men in the state. Of course, Richmond was noteable for his wealth and how he managed to bob through the Depression in good fortune, for he formerly was a highly esteemed scientist and engineer. However, now, he was merely a crazed man that would hide away in his house with nothing but his tiny family and many machines.

 Mrs. Richmond grew nervous about her husband because of his state of mind, yet let her man continue in his neverending work and even encouraged him daily with refreshing words. She knew that her husband wouldn't have a motive in life if she took his hobby away, and always wondered what he could actually find happens any of his metal friends deemed themselves sucessful. Therefore, she left him be in his basement as she took on the household duties upstairs of cooking, cleaning, and caring for their only child, Julia.

 However, there was one day when Mrs. Richmond began to feel concern for her spouse.

 "Lila," Mr. Richmond said to his wife at the dinner table one evening, "have you ever wondered...what is out there?"

 "What do you mean, Harold?" she had responded. "Do you mean out in the woods?"

 "No, not _here_ , in Minnesota," he replied. Not even in these United States, or in this beloved world! I'm talking about out there, _up_ there, in the great masses of the stars."

 "But that's all that's up there is stars, isn't there?"

 "And planets, nebulae, comets..."

 "But not any life, Harold, that's ridiculous."

 "You know it could be possible."

 "Yes, says Charles Darwin, but we don't believe in that sort of thing, dearest."

 "I'm looking at this through Christian eyes, Lila. What if God-"

 "Let's not speak of this at the dinner table," Mrs. Richmond interrupted. She motioned her eyes toward Julia, the little eight-year old girl who was staring at her father with the widest eyes imaginable.

 "Perhaps another time, then," said Mr. Richmond.

 "Or perhaps never again." However, Mrs. Richmond could never keep the conversation at a stand-still. It was certain that Harold Richmond would keep his mouth shut whenever Julia was around, but who she was absent from the room his mind would constantly spill ideas.

 "I'm having trouble recognizing exactly what you still believe in," she told him one night at bed.

 "My beliefs are clear, Lila, but how can I keep them straight when everything changes all the time?"

 Mrs. Richmond's concern faded after a while, however. She knew her husband was always down in his space all hours of the day, but she knew he was always on time for meals, he took care of the house's exterior and interior and was always prepared for church every Sunday. The wife even started to find better things for the husband to do around the house. Perhaps, she wondered, he would soon forget his antics, like it was a phase.

 That was before Mr. Richmond decided to take up a strange hobby for his character.

 Ice fishing.

 "You are sure you know exactly what you're doing?" asked the missus one morning.

 "Of course!" replied Harold. "You drill a little hole big enough for a fish, and then you sit there humming to yourself and smoking a cigar until something pulls."

 "But the ice! If it cracks, you fall right in!"

 "Nonsense, it's a good few feet deep. I'll be perfectly alright." And away the man went, walking through the deep, white trenches of snow. The lake wasn't far away, only a quarter of a mile, but what a trek that was in the dead of winter. Mrs. Richmond looked out her window until her husband was a mere dot in the snow, and then sat back on the family's davenport with a mug of hot coffee. He had finally found something else to do...

* * *

 "Ma, may I go out and play with the snow?" asked Juila as she looked at the falling flakes through the window.

 "Heavens, no! You'll catch the most horrendous cold! And besides, the sun's going down. It'll be dark as soon as you're out there," replied the mother.

 "The sky is pretty, though," replied Julia. "I wish I could fly in it, like a goose. Then I could sit in the clouds."

 "Well, that would be fun wouldn't it? But it's still too cold," stated Mrs. Richmond. At the same time she was looking out the window in the kitchen with her daughter, wondering where in the world her husband had vanished to. She impatiently tapped her foot.

 "Where in the blazes is your father?" she said aloud. "Ah well, better get a pot of coffee on the stove for him." Lila turned to the small stove that was sitting next to the kitchen window and began the process to making the warm drink. Suddenly, Julia jumped.

 "There he is! There he is, Ma! Looky there!" Mrs. Richmond glanced over to the window and saw her husband trudging back down the path he had gone out on.

 "What in the Lord's name has he got there?" she muttered. For Harold wasn't carrying any type of fish, nor the supplies he went out with. Nothing but a strange, round thing that was about three feet long and four feet in circumference.

 "Julia, go to your room," Mrs. Richmond told her daughter.

 "But I want to see what Papa's got," she said.

 "Now," restated her mother. Julia hopped down from a chair she was standing on to look out the window and darted into her room. Mrs. Richmond finished the coffee and then stood at the door, waiting for her husband to arrive. When he did she pulled the door open, let Mr. Richmond pass through, and then with a jerk she slammed it back to it's place. Then, in a mess, she turned to her snowy husband.

 "Alright, Harold, I know you and your little goofy antics, but this has gone too far! What the heck is this?!" Mrs. Richmond was red in the face as she demanded her answer. But her husband showed concern for other things.

 "Darling, I really can't put up with this right now! I must get to my lab!"

 "But first, please explain to me what you've got!"

 "I don't know! I found it frozen just in the top layer of ice at the lake. It had looked as if it had been there for months without anyone noticing it. I must examine it!"

 Mrs. Richmond protested, and when Mr. Richmond argued that it was possibly something alien, the wife definately got in his way. However, Mr. Richmond won the battle with telling his wife that it could be nothing but junk metal after all, and that if it WAS alien the family would make a fortune on it. The missus let him pass to his quarters with a huff.

 "But do remember that you didn't come back with your fishing pole and chair!" she shouted to him.

 "Oh don't worry dear, I won't forget!" he replied as his voice faded down the stairs.

 "And don't unleash anything that you might regret!"

 "I won't!" Mr. Richmond almost rolled his eyes silently as he set his newfound discovery on a flat examination table. He strode up the stairs again as quick as a flash and shut the door. Then it was time for preperation.

 "Well, I don't need this anymore," he said as he threw off his winter wear on a nearby coat hanger. He reached for his sterile white lab coat and fit it on his arms and shoulders, and soon after, he reached into his pocket, thrust on his large spectacles and began to slip on a pair of latex gloves.

 "Now, the first thing to do would be to clean you up, hm?" he told his prize as he started a sink of water running. Mr. Richmond added a gentle cleanser into the pure liquid and started to scrub the capsule with delicate care. Away the green and brown dead algae and moss went to reveal a much prettier bronze exterior. The scientist noticed that all around this shell there was the strangest designs of multiple curves and circles that happened to overlap each other like some intricate display. It made Mr. Richmond believe more that this metal he had found was more that mere junk.

 Enough of this capsule had been cleaned to reveal that it could, in fact, be opened. Just doing the action was the main problem. Mr. Richmond tried as many different prying, cracking, and wedging methods he could think of, but there was no success to his plans. He had almost come to the point of giving up for the day and retreating to dinner. In fact, Mr. Richmond actually gave into the idea when his spouse called him for dinner and he smelled the delicious aroma of baked turkey coming from the upper floor.

 Richmond retreated to the table and ate away to his fill, not telling anything to his wife about his failure to figure out what was in the thing he had found. He feared to be nagged of "told so", and just stated plainly that he was "still cleaning it, the thing was so darn dirty". Nevertheless, he went back to the lab later that night to shut up the basement and throw in the towel.

  
 "I'll just have to try different methods tomorrow, I suppose," the man told himself. "Between the fishing, the wife nagging, and this, I'm just ready to sleep." He walked over to the capsule with his hands deep in his pockets as he stared at the thing through his thick glasses.

 "Until tomorrow, then," he said briefly. Then, as the scientist would do with all his work, he brushed his bare hand on the surface of the capsule, a way to say "goodnight". His wife always rolled her eyes when he did such a thing. But instead of Richmond giving his finding a rub and then turning to tread up the stairs, something really bizarre happened. His hand was suddenly scorched as the metal around his skin turned to a bright yellow.

 "Egad!" Mr. Richmond exclaimed as he yanked his hand to his body. He immediately scanned his palm for signs of burns, but nothing was viable. Only the feeling of the heat was there. However, that wasn't his only problem...

 The capsule started to almost become alive as the yellow glow where Richmond's hand was faded into the metal exterior. Sounds of what seemed like gears turning filled the air, and a sound, almost like a faint wheezing, came through the crevice that was around the perimeter of the capsule. Steam appeared through that very crevice, as well as light, as the two sides, top and bottom, began to separate from each other.

 But then, there was silence.

 Mr. Richmond looked up the stairs. Good, his wife hadn't heard anything. Whatever the capsule had did wasn't very loud, anyhow, but Richmond was cautious. Then, striking his curiosity back to the pod, he walked toward his strange specimen.

 "Apparently..." he stuttered to himself, "that thing...it opened with the touch of my bare hand!" Slowly, he advanced. Steam was still creeping out of the pod, and the rusty golden thing seemed to almost live. Mr. Richmond had to hold his fear back. This was a huge moment.

 "Now," he said to himself, clenching and unclenching his hands, "let's see what's inside..." He gently touched the sides of the pod and moved his arms away. It was cool enough to hold. He moved his arms back, grasped the sides of the top half of the pod, and prepared to open his discovery. Mr. Richmond took a deep breath. He closed his eyes. Then, with a steady hand, he pulled open the pod...

 Quickly he dropped the lid that he removed. The man about stumbled back, his glasses almost falling off his face. It was impossible...

 "A human, an entire human, inside the pod!" he said, his brow sweating in anxiety. "But it's not possible! Nothing this small in diameter and size could possibly be bigger on the inside!"

 


End file.
